The Times

Prelude to brighter future for gas runs into a storm

Emily Gosden Energy Editor: Monday 17 Jan 2022

In the open ocean more than 120 miles off the coast of Australia lies Prelude, Shell’s floating liquefied natural gas plant — the biggest floating object ever made. The energy group spent billions of dollars building the vessel, the length of four football pitches, to tap gas beneath the seabed in this remote location, superchill it to a liquid and offload it to tankers to sell worldwide. read more

…no tax or LNG royalties from… Shell’s Prelude projects…

The Guardian

Western Australia’s offshore gasfields pay almost no royalties and stoke carbon emissions, report finds

Australia Institute report finds state received only $430m of its revenue from industry that generated $27bn in exports last year

Peter Hannam: Sun 16 Jan 2022 16.30 GMT

Australia’s giant offshore gasfields are paying almost no royalties, create few jobs and are a large and rising source of greenhouse gases, according to a new report from the Australia Institute. read more

Shell Prelude meltdown: Something went very badly wrong here…

EXPERT COMMENT ABOUT PRELUDE MELTDOWN BY “AN  OLD SHELL E&P ENGINEERING SEA DOG”

With reference to cargo loading operations at Prelude.

It’s been a while since I was involved with these activities but the principles remain the same.  As always there have been many revisions with the objective to improve overall safety for people and property.

Prelude in particular is unique as it exports three differing products with very different properties. 3.6 million tons of LNG, 1.3 million tons condense and 0.4 million tons of LPG. read more

OFFSHORE ENERGY

Shell’s Prelude FLNG risked major failure due to power issues

Australia’s offshore security regulator NOPSEMA said Shell’s Prelude FLNG facility risked the “catastrophic failure” in December due to a power outage.

Prelude is a floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility, located offshore, north-northeast of Broome, in Western Australia. It is designed to extract, liquefy and store natural gas at sea before it is transferred and shipped to customers. It arrived at its current location back in mid-2017.

At the beginning of December 2021,  Shell had to temporarily suspend production at the facility because of a fire that occurred at the facility the day before. Previously, the FLNG unit went offline from February 2020 to January 2021 due to an electrical trip. read more

Bill Campbell provides further expert comment on the Shell Prelude debacle

By Bill Campbell

I was a bit under the weather yesterday and was a bit fed up really with banging head against the wall, short of time when got an email about NOPSEMA so apologise for what was a scrawl but an attempt to give you both a flavour of what must have been putting guys offshore under pressure.  An inordinate amount of Alarms and musters also. But remember a number of the DO were happening in the period when the plant was down so risk levels may not have been high.  read more

WHAT THE PRELUDE FLNG WHISTLEBLOWER SAID IN DEC 2013: “…god for bid if anything should happen on that vessel in the future I want it known that I raised my concerns officially.”: “It will go down like a lead balloon (or possibly prelude) but if I was an Australian I would refuse to work on the vessel…”

Nine years later, the ill-fated vessel has been shut down because of repeated dangerous occurrences and near catastrophe. Shell will not be able to claim that it was not warned again and again. 

By John Donovan

The headline arises from email correspondence between retired Shell Global HSE Group Auditor Bill Campbell and John Donovan on 10 Jan 2022 relating to the Shell Prelude project. The name of a third party copied in on the correspondence has been redacted. 

But first, some extracts from emails from nearly a decade ago sent to me by a high-level whistleblower in the Prelude FLNG project. In the event of a disaster, I feel sure the authorities will be seeking all such evidence, but by then it would be too late to save lives. 

19 Dec 2013

…and also warned shell on several occasions and this advice has been ignored by all party’s as financial interests come before safety and I have serious enough concerns to want my name removed from all records.

I have documentary evidence of the state of the packages being installed on the vessel and manufactured by totally unqualified personnel, failure of any understanding of the standards and regulations by management.

The list goes on and on but regardless of my own feelings my concerns are for the whole industry if this kind of practice goes on and god for bid if anything should happen on that vessel in the future I want it known that I raised my concerns officially. read more

Will Shell have to abandon the Prelude experiment?

From John Donovan: 8 Jan 2022

Dear Mr Andrew Smith

I have copied the email to Shell Legal Director Mr Donny Ching and Shell CEO Mr Ben van Beurden because the subject is a matter of great importance. Namely the lives and well-being of Shell employees and contractors working on the Prelude experiment. read more

By John Donovan

Printed below in italics is the content of an email sent earlier today to the Australian National Offshore Petroleum and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) by Bill Campbell, a retired senior Shell HSE expert and long-term Shell shareholder. Bill led Health, Safety and Environmental Audits for Shell worldwide. His credentials to comment on such specialist issues are impeccable.

Bill’s email to NOPSEMA is about an article published days ago by the Brisbane Times under the headline: Shell’s Prelude gas vessel faced ‘catastrophic failure’ from power outage. It was authored by a tenacious energy journalist Peter Milne who has been responsible for a series of revealing articles in recent years about the $24b Prelude vessel. read more

Reuters

Shell Pursues $7 Billion Buyback ‘At Pace’ Despite LNG Troubles

“Shell will later this month move its head office from The Hague to London, scrap its dual share structure and change its name to Shell Plc as part of a plan to simplify its structure and shift its tax residence from the Netherlands.”: “Shell said that its production and liquefaction volumes were impacted in the fourth quarter by unplanned maintenance, mainly in Australia, where its giant Prelude floating LNG vessel was hit by a power outage.” read more

Brisbane Times

Shell’s Prelude gas vessel faced ‘catastrophic failure’ from power outage

By Peter Milne: January 5, 2022 

Power problems on Shell’s giant Prelude gas vessel in December with almost 300 workers on board risked the “catastrophic failure” of parts of the ship’s structure, according to a report by the offshore safety regulator.

While the crew off the WA coast battled in tropical heat without air conditioning or ventilation to restore power, the steel spine of the vessel was cooling towards a point where it could have lost the strength to support the 80,000 tonnes of gas processing equipment on top of the 488 metre-long vessel. read more

The Many Growing Pains of Shell’s Prelude FLNG Continue

January 4, 2022: By Trent Jacobs

Journal of Petroleum Technology

Once heralded as an engineering marvel, it has now become one of the biggest engineering disappointments in recent history. This is the story so far of Shell’s Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) plant which suffered a new setback last month after it was ordered to halt production following an onboard fire.

According to multiple reports, the fire occurred in the late evening hours of 2 December and caused a complete power outage on the facility where around 200 personnel live and work. Over the next 3 days, the crew made multiple attempts to regain power but were successful only in restoring intermittent power.

The incident prompted an onboard inspection and investigation by Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA), which on 23 December ordered the supermajor not resume production.

Shell must now prove to the regulator that Prelude can safely recover from such power losses in the future before it can resume gas production.

Based on its initial investigation, NOPSEMA concluded that “the operator did not have a sufficient understanding of the risks of the power system on the facility, including failure mechanisms, interdependencies, and recovery.” read more

gCaptain

Australia Tells Shell to Keep Prelude FLNG Unit Offline Until It’s Proven Safe for Workers

Under the direction of Australia’s offshore energy regulator NOPSEMA, Shell Australia is to “undertake an investigation and create a plan, schedule and commitment to take all necessary corrective actions and demonstrate that the facility can operate safely in the event of power loss” before production can be restarted.

The direction comes after an electrical fire on December 2 led to a complete loss of power to the facility, resulting unreliable and intermittent power for three days. Media reports say the facility was partially evacuated, leaving only a skeleton crew for essential functions. read more

RIGZONE

Prelude FLNG Remains Shut In Until Shell Makes It Safe For Work

by Bojan Lepic: Rigzone Staff: Monday, December 27, 2021

Supermajor Shell has been told to keep its massive Prelude FLNG facility shut until it can convince Australian oil and gas safety regulator NOPSEMA that it can keep the facility properly powered and that the safety systems were operational.

The order is a reaction to a shutdown of production from the Prelude FLNG facility earlier this month it lost power, and the crew making several failed attempts to re-establish power aboard. read more

Expert comments relating to the Peter Milne article for WAtoday:

Shell ordered to shut down Prelude floating LNG until it is safe: 24 December 2021

Comment by Bill Campbell the retired HSE Group Auditor at Shell EP International

Actions by the Regulator should be welcomed.

Not surprisingly, it’s obvious and should be obvious to the keenest shellites that Prelude has serious design and operational problems raising workforce risk levels to unacceptable levels. You simply cannot continue to operate if you are unable to demonstrate through weekly testing that safety-critical equipment, fire pumps and emergency generators et al are available automatically and immediately when called on. This is a legal requirement and a commitment given by Shell in the installations Safety Case. read more

WAtoday

Shell ordered to shut down Prelude floating LNG until it is safe

By Peter Milne: December 24, 2021 — 10.52am

Australia’s offshore safety regulator has ordered Shell to shut down its giant Prelude floating LNG vessel off Western Australia’s North West coast while damning the company’s ability to operate the facility after it descended into chaos in early December following a series of power failures.

The direction from regulator NOPSEMA means Prelude, the biggest floating vessel ever built, will be shut down until Shell can convince them there will be no repeat of the recent dangerous episode. read more

WAtoday

How Shell lost control of its $24B Prelude floating gas factory

By Peter Milne: December 21, 2021 — 9.01pm

In early December a small fire on Shell’s 488-m Prelude gas facility off WA’s coast kicked off a cascade of failures that left about 250 workers, 475 km from Broome, without communications, lights, running water or access to helicopters.

With almost every system on Australia’s most complex offshore facility out of action workers scrambled to restart power that everything depended on, with at least two stretchered to the Prelude’s hospital with heat exhaustion. read more